On Thursday morning (16 May), the IRCTC website stopped working while lakhs of users were trying to book tatkal tickets. The website began flashing a “Downtime Message” which claimed that the e-ticketing services won’t be available due to maintenance activity, reports Times Now News.

If passengers were seeking to cancel their tickets, they were asked to call customer care numbers or drop an e-mail.

Many irate passengers took to twitter to express their displeasure which also resulted in IRCTC trending on the social media website. The passengers complained about a lack of notice from the IRCTC website over this downtime and questioned how would they now book tickets to go home and cast votes for elections.

The affected passengers also called for IRCTC to put better systems in place to avoid such instances in the future.